Publisher Artax Games and developer Vata Games bring us a 2.5D adventure platformer full of problems
Indie games have grown in popularity over the years. Games that don’t have a lot of budget, but are made with a lot of love by their creators. Indie titles tend to be the ones that take the most risks, innovate the most and bring novelty. Ario, the game in question, belongs to this group of independent titles, but everything is not always rosy. The title from Artax Games and Vata Games, although it has good foundations to be a good title, is weighed down by its errors and design flaws. If you want to know everything about Ario, the Xbox community is for you. We start.
Save your mother and come to your town
We are Ario, a young man who lives peacefully with his mother in a city in ancient Persia. A day, A powerful dark army bursts in, destroying everything in its path and kidnapping many residents, including our mother.. After these events, we must go in search of our mother and avenge our people from this strange and powerful army. With this typical approach, you create a story that, while not bad, seems like it has been seen many times before. Despite satisfying elements, like the hand-drawn cutscenes or the setting in a steampunk Persia, the story doesn’t have any memorable moments or enemies, so it remains halfway done.
Good ideas… but poorly executed
Ario is a 2.5D platform and adventure video game, reminiscent of titles from a few generations ago, such as the Klonoa saga, but which does not reach the quality of this one. And Ario has many problems, both control and design. Controlling our character is simple. We only have a few steps to take. Jump, cartwheel, punch and use a crossbow. As the adventure progresses, we will learn some new movements, but these do not add much and constitute rather anecdotal elements. But the problem does not lie in the simplicity or the few actions that our character performs, but in the imprecision of the movements and the response of the game to our actions.. Ario responds to our movements whenever he wants. Many times we will see the game end on screen because of the video game itself, not because of our own inaccuracies or errors.
Another big problem with Ario is its design. According to Vata Games, its developer, the title has touches of metroidvania, which I haven’t found anywhere. Throughout the adventure our goal is to move forward and move forward, at no time can we retrace our steps in search of a collectible or a new accessible area. And the video game does not have any sort of collectible, something totally strange belonging to the platform and adventure genre.
Lights and shadows in graphics
Ario’s graphics section is somewhat irregular. At first glance, it looks like a striking title that catches the eye, thanks to the color palette it uses., but when the camera zooms in, we see all the irregularities that the title presents. Starting with the design of the characters, which seems to be made of modeling clay, or of elements like water, which resembles any element except water… As for the technical aspect, in the Series X, the video game works correctly. At specific times, I noticed some frame drops, but nothing alarming. Where Ario isn’t as polished is on the issue of bugs. During my 3-4 hours of play (its duration is a bit short) I had to restart the game numerous times, because my character remained stuck in a corner, or disappeared from the map in a surprising way.
The sound section delivers without much fanfare. The character voices are more than adequateeven if they seem a little forced in their interpretation. The soundtrack is also acceptableit’s not boring and corresponds well to the events we experience in the game, but it can be somewhat repetitive, if you get stuck more than necessary at a certain level.
Conclusions
Ario had everything to be an excellent 2.5D platform and adventure video game. Due to lack of budget or time, the title that arrived on the market is plagued by problems, poorly implemented mechanics and a very questionable design. Within the Xbox community, we greatly value independent studios and publishers, but in this case the work of Vata Games and Artax Games falls short of almost everything that is offered. And it’s a shame, because the video game has many mechanics that could have given more, like the final bosses. This is perhaps Ario’s biggest problem, the studio’s great ambition. In many cases, less is more, and this may be a perfect example.
Money
$12.45
Benefits
- Its price is not very high
- He has very good ideas…
The inconvenients
- …although poorly implemented
- Full of bugs and failures
- Commands do not respond correctly
- The lack of collectibles in a game of this type…
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